How about not doing conversions? I've found pager suppliers who specify
broad frequency ranges across several bands, including 2 meters. I can
inquire and find out how large an order would be needed to get a custom
frequency. (Too bad they're not likely to be easy to hack to work on AX.25)
I already know of one outfit that'd probably be able to do it for a 500
unit minimum order. That's a little more than I'd like to sink into
such a project right away, though, unless they're really cheap.
Scott
N1VG
Dave Baxter wrote:
> I like that idea!
>> Not sure how easy/dificult the pager conversion is, but over hear, I
> think they use RF arround 175MHz, so not too far from 2m. Can they be
> made to monitor more than one frequency? Like, scan for a signal?
>> Finding a suitable frequency to use could be "interesting", we only have
> 2MHz to play with, and most of that is band-planed, what isn't has all
> sorts of "little private nets on", but only when you want to experiment
> do they come out of the noise and complain.. Nothing new there then by
> the sound of it!
>> There are also "still some issues" putting up new stuff on 70cms these
> days.
>> Cheers.
>> Dave G0WBX.
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Ben Jackson [mailto:bbj at innismir.net]
>> Sent: 26 January 2009 13:48
>> To: bruninga at usna.edu; aprssig at tapr.org; bruninga at usna.edu;
>> TAPR APRS Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [aprssig] Doubling APRS messaging in ham radio overnight
>>>>>> On 1/24/2009, "Robert Bruninga" <bruninga at usna.edu> wrote:
>>>> >What we really need is someone to take on the simple task of a PIC
>> >converter to convert APRS messages to DTMF PAGING text
>> messages so that
>> >those dozens of THOUSANDS of existing amateur radio DTMF paging HT's
>> >can be used to receive and send APRS messages.
>>>> Bob, while the number of FT-51s and TH-78s might outnumber
>> THD7s, I think the question that needs to be asked is are the
>> owners interested in such a service? Instead of focusing on
>> older HTs that people may or may not have. Has anyone ever
>> looked at a APRS -> POCSAG[1] Gateway?
>>>> Older, working pagers are a dime a dozen on the used market
>> and there are some people who have refitted them to work on
>> Amateur bands[2]. With the fact that there (quite literally)
>> buckets full of working pagers at HamFests, why not have a
>> "messagegate" that takes APRS messages to stations and
>> translates them to a message destined for a POCSAG compatible
>> pager. There were certain KAM TNCs that could encode POCSAG natively
>>>> Comments? Laughter? Rotten tomatoes? :)
>>>> ~Ben
>>>> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POCSAG>> [2] http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/pager/plan.html>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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